Strange Address Book / Exchange Behavior

[Scott Sanford]

I have been seeing something odd with my Syncing of Entourage with the
Address Book. I'm connected to an exchange server (2003) and originally, I
thought it was something related to that, but now I have my doubts:

If I have AB open while working in Entourage, I sometimes see my contacts go
to empty or the ME record only.

I had thought this was some sort of periodic refresh, but now that I'm using
Plaxo, I noticed I was getting e-mails of a client's birthday 10-15 times an
hour! I thought that Plaxo was just a nuisance, but then I saw the growl
indicator show my 2400+ contacts as deleted from Plaxo only to pop up an
notification 5 minutes later saying 2400+ additions.

Any ideas? Would it be better to use the Sync with Exchange feature in AB
that seems to be new in 10.5.3 rather than through Entourage?

I'm trying to sync for using my iPhone. As it is, sometimes I take the phone
with me only to find an empty address book or calendar. Re-cradling it seems
to fix it most of the time.

Another strange item is that AB and iCal notes don't respect line breaks. It
syncs as a single run-on sentence. Is this a limitation of the sync or a
bug?

Thanks again,
STSanford

 

[Scott T. Sanford]

bump
Anyone?
I just noticed that the same thing is happening on my other Mac.

I was wondering what the best way to configure Entourage is for
RELIABLE syncing with AB and iCal, is it now better to just use those
applications' preferences to sync rather than going through the
Entourage / Microsoft Sync Services stuff....

 

[William Smith]

bump
Anyone?
I just noticed that the same thing is happening on my other Mac.

I was wondering what the best way to configure Entourage is for RELIABLE
syncing with AB and iCal, is it now better to just use those
applications' preferences to sync rather than going through the
Entourage / Microsoft Sync Services stuff....

Hi Scott!

You haven't mentioned your version of Entourage but I will guess it's
2008. Sync Services syncing has been pretty abysmal since the initial
release of Office 2008 and has improved over the next two updates (now
12.1.0). If you aren't running 12.1.0 then you should be.

I would find it strange that you're syncing Entourage to iCal and
Address Book unless you're also syncing something else like a handheld
device. What else is in this mix?

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>

 

[Scott T. Sanford]

Thanks bill,
I am using the iPhone, hence the AB and iCal sync.
Heck with the way Entourage looks, and it's reduced functionality as
compared to Outlook, I'm looking for something, anything, that can be a
better replacement for Outlook. Why the heck M$ decided to cripple
their Mac "Exchange Client" I don't understand..

 

[William Smith]

I am using the iPhone, hence the AB and iCal sync.
Heck with the way Entourage looks, and it's reduced functionality as
compared to Outlook, I'm looking for something, anything, that can be a
better replacement for Outlook. Why the heck M$ decided to cripple their
Mac "Exchange Client" I don't understand..

Using the iPhone... that makes sense. I believe sync improvements are
still to come from Apple. Personally, if MobileMe will work with
Entourage then I'm going to abandon as much of Sync Services as
possible. The architecture of this system should be much more robust
from what I've been reading.

Regarding Microsoft deciding to "cripple" their software, I would say
that it has not been crippled but rather has not been fully evolved:

"Why did Microsoft replace Outlook for Mac with Entourage?"
<http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2007/05/why_did_microsoft_replace_outl.html>

Entourage 2008 is only the second of four versions of Entourage that
have had Exchange functionality. (I don't count Entourage X because it
was a late patch with very minimal support.) Several things have delayed
progress for Exchange functionality such as Apple's switch to Intel and
the need to rewrite all of Office 2008 to XCode from CodeWarrior (or
whatever they were using). Unfortunately, a ton of under the hood work
had to come before more features.

I'm not making excuses for Microsoft but I can understand the amount of
work they've had to go through.

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>

 

[Sam Brown]

Entourage 2008 is only the second of four versions of Entourage that
have had Exchange functionality. (I don't count Entourage X because it
was a late patch with very minimal support.) Several things have delayed
progress for Exchange functionality such as Apple's switch to Intel and
the need to rewrite all of Office 2008 to XCode from CodeWarrior (or
whatever they were using). Unfortunately, a ton of under the hood work
had to come before more features.

I'm not making excuses for Microsoft but I can understand the amount of
work they've had to go through.

With all due respect, how is this any different than Adobe Photoshop CS3? If
a switch to intel means recoding, then others have had to do it, and have
done so successfully. I know you said you weren't making excuses for MS, but
still, they don't have my sympathy on that one.

 

[William Smith]

With all due respect, how is this any different than Adobe Photoshop CS3? If
a switch to intel means recoding, then others have had to do it, and have
done so successfully. I know you said you weren't making excuses for MS, but
still, they don't have my sympathy on that one.

Hi Sam!

I don't know the difference. We can debate it all we like but I doubt
we'll get both Adobe and Microsoft in the same room to tell us their
development strategies and methodologies.

Knowing some about development, all I'm saying is that I can understand
the amount of work Microsoft had to go through.

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>